In Shakespeare Behind Bars, we get to witness firsthand the transformative, therapeutic powers of art. These are people--killers, rapists--struggling to find meaning and redemption in Shakespeare's Tempest, a play I have not read but think I have a good thematic read on after watching this film. And while it's a pleasure to watch these convicts better themselves through performance, I think the real social value of this film comes in what it does to us, as the audience.
One of my favorite directors out there is Todd Solondz, hyper-controversial nebbish behind Storytelling, Palindromes, and most famously Happiness. Most of the controversy that swirls around his films deal with his mostly sympathetic portrayals of what you'd normally think of as the dregs of society: in Welcome to the Dollhouse, for example, a young bully and would-be rapist is depicted as sweet, gentle, and confused. Happiness devotes a good chunk of its running length to fleshing out and making likable a pedophile and sex offender.
Of course, the characters in Solondz's film are generally not murderers, which the vast majority of the convicts featured in this play appear to be. The filmmakers have structured the film brilliantly, allowing us to meet and grow to like the main players before one by one letting us know about the reprehensible things that landed them in jail in the first place. It's hard to square, for example, the articulate-if-not-sort-of-oddly-affected Leonard with the rapist we find out he is. Ditto Sammie: it's almost impossible, from those first few minutes onwards, to imagine him hurting--let alone killing--anybody.
Had the filmmakers let us know their crimes upfront, it'd be far less likely that we as an audience would be able to accept and sympathize with them. But they don't, and the results are spine-tingling. Portions of Shakespeare Behind Bars made me remember what it felt like to watch The Sopranos in its prime: to watch tender scenes between Tony and his wife (or daughter, whoever his mistress was at the time) while at the same time knowing, in the back of your brain, that this person is not, technically, "good," that this person has done some incredibly bad things in their life.
And so these once-nameless convicts are "redeemed" in our eyes, the same way that acting out Shakespeare's words allows them to redeem themselves in their own eyes. (All this multi-layering and adaptation talk brings to mind Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation, perhaps the best work out there on the pitfalls and artistic headaches inherent in making a work of art out of a work of art.)
The film seems to be above all a testament to what the warden advocated in its first five minutes--the life-altering power of education. This is my last Rumination, so I'll end it by saying I learned quite a bit around here this semester. (Also I have an irrational fear of going to prison, which this film has in some ways relieved. They might be killers, but boy do they seem nice!)
I've had several hours now to let "Shakespeare Behind Bars" settle in my mind and I've found myself becoming slightly sceptical about it. Don't get me wrong, I still think the program is very interesting and certainly a good thing to provide for prisoners. At the same time though, the film does portray these rapists and murderers turned actors in an almost melodramatic light.
ReplyDeleteI have a lot of compassion for people like that as well as respect for their efforts to reform, but I can't help but wonder how much of an act they could put on for the camera in their interviews. If they can put on a convincing production of "The Tempest", they can certainly use their camera time to incite our sympathies. Of course, that may not be the case at all and even if it is, it might not be a bad thing. Maybe all the convicts in this film are genuine, but even so I think we need to think critically about "Shakespeare Behind Bars" within the context of its filming. It's amazing how much the presence of a camera can change people's behavior.